Hi from Mumbai. Been here for a couple of days, and tomorrow I go to Bangalore for a few days.
Mumbai is not too unpleasant at this time of the year weather wise. Spent last evening in Colaba meeting with a friend. Best way to get there from my office in Lower Parel is to take […]
Entries Tagged as 'Population'
Some are Born to Sweet Delight
February 20th, 2007 · 15 Comments
Tags: Sex Selection
Demographic Cognitive Dissonance
October 21st, 2006 · 16 Comments
People who don’t practise what they preach are not necessarily hypocritical. Perhaps they are merely not sufficiently intelligent to realize that what they do is inconsistent with the logical implications of what they preach. This gap between what they insist to be true while doing something which reveals their words to be false can be […]
Tags: Population
Fighting the population battle
August 27th, 2005 · 1 Comment
Two major threads weave through Joel Cohen’s book How Many People Can the Earth Support? (1995): the insufficiency of our present understanding, and the finiteness of time.
Tags: Population
Forever Trembling on the Brink (Of Numbers)
January 6th, 2005 · 3 Comments
The extent of the damage and loss of life due to the tsunami has now become clear. Soumen Chakrabarti emailed me and wrote:
You recently wrote:
That is why I claim that natural disasters like the recent tsunami cannot hold a candle to the destructive power of humans.
I did a little […]
Tags: My Favorite Bits · Population
Readings: “How to Win the Nobel Prize”
September 9th, 2004 · 2 Comments
A friend of mine, who was a fellow grad student at UC Berkeley, gave me as a gift Michael Bishop’s How to Win the Nobel Prize [Harvad Univ Press 2003]. “In 1989 Micheal Bishop and Harold Varmus were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery tha normal genes under certain conditions can cause […]
Tags: Education · Population · Quotes
High Population Considered Necessary but not Sufficient for Poverty
August 30th, 2004 · 9 Comments
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since my last blog entry. “Where in the world,” some asked, “is Atanu and why is he not writing stuff anymore?” For better or for worse, I am back from a brief round-the-world trip. Among the exotic far off places of the world, I […]
Tags: Economics · Population
Numbers – 5
August 2nd, 2004 · 4 Comments
The Business Standard of 12th Jan 2004 carries an item on page 3 with the heading 33 million more Indians in poor list in 2001-02. The percentage of people below the poverty line is estimated to be around 25. That is, India has about 250 million people who are so unimaginably poor that […]
Tags: Population
Numbers — 4
July 31st, 2004 · 5 Comments
No one reading this is likely to be suffering from malnutrition, illiteracy, lack of health care, lack of drinking water, and any of the marvels of modern technology such as digital gizmos and jet travel. That is so because we are sitting on top of a very large pyramid at the bottom of […]
Tags: Population
HMS Titanic — 4
July 31st, 2004 · 5 Comments
In the last few days I have been trying to understand what caused the Titanic to sink. To belabor the obvious I must admit that I consider the sinking of the Titanic to be a metaphor. There are important lessons that I would like to draw from it.
Tags: Population
Numbers - 3
July 29th, 2004 · 2 Comments
Joel Cohen’s book How Many People Can The Earth Support should be required reading for Indian policy makers. Here is more from the introduction:
The unprecedented growth in human numbers and in human power to alter the Earth requires, and will require, unprecedented human agility in adapting to environmental, economic and social problems, sometimes […]
Tags: Population
HMS Titanic — 3
July 29th, 2004 · 1 Comment
Those in charge of the Titanic disregarded the warnings. And those who were not in charge were blissfully unaware of the fact that those in charge were not fully competent.
The Titanic had sealed its own fate by the cavalier disregard to those ice warnings by their Marconi operators. Particularly the last two, […]
Tags: Population
Numbers — 2
July 27th, 2004 · 2 Comments
A few years ago, my college at UC Berkeley was searching for a dean. Prof. Joel Cohen was invited to check out the College of Natural Resources. I asked him about his book How Many People Can the Earth Support? (1995) over lunch.
A few years ago, he said, a journalist had called […]
Tags: Population
HMS Titanic — 2
July 27th, 2004 · 1 Comment
The HMS Titanic was a giant of a ship. It was doing 21 knots that fateful night.
Now it was 9.40pm, and still the ice warnings came. At no time had Captain Smith or the senior officers ordered a cautionary reduction in speed, or had gone to the trouble of having extra lookouts posted, something which […]
Tags: Population
Numbers
July 26th, 2004 · 2 Comments
Exponential growth can be a terrifying thing. We all know the story of the king who was foolish enough to grant a boon to one who was familiar with the concept of exponential growth. To recount, the king said, “Ask and I will grant it to you.”
The man said, “All I want is a […]
Tags: Population
The HMS Titanic
July 26th, 2004 · 1 Comment
Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
What an absolutely evocative expression. I cannot get that out of my head every time I muster up enough courage to read the newspapers. Most of those out there on the top deck are busy with something trivial while below decks the situationis dire.
Tags: Population
India’s Disposable Children
July 8th, 2004 · 11 Comments
A couple of weeks ago, I had discussed A Matter of Rights in connection with the population problem and had concluded that post with
Does a person have a right to inflict pain and suffering on another person? If my action were to lead to immense suffering, and I plead that if you do […]
Tags: Population
Irreversible Decisions
June 24th, 2004 · 5 Comments
A friend of mine with whom I had dinner last night at a restaurant in Colaba has an interesting job. As he puts it, he gets women pregnant and is paid handsomely for doing it. He is a doctor and runs an in vitro fertilization clinic. There are more than one way of making babies […]
Tags: Population
Sex selection in a Second-Best World
June 23rd, 2004 · 5 Comments
Niket in a comment raised the issue of the skewed sex ratio in the context of population control. To my mind, the differential preference for boys over girls is a consequence of overpopulation as well. If the population problem were to be addressed, the skewed sex ratio problem will also be addressed. For […]
Tags: Population
The Population-Poverty Trap
June 22nd, 2004 · 3 Comments
The causal connection between population and poverty is widely researched and understood by many economists and demographers quite well. There is a causal link between poverty and population which is mediated by a third component which is broadly labeled the local resource base. Poverty cannot be understood without reference to the resource base that the […]
Tags: Population
The Road to Hell
June 21st, 2004 · 3 Comments
Some time ago in a piece titled Dutch Disease Disturbing the Universe I had written:
Tags: Population
